More Valuable Than Sparrows

God cares about every detail of our lives, and submitting to His sovereign plan leads to life everlasting.

In 1905, Walter and Civilla Martin befriended Mr. and Mrs. Doolittle, a godly and joyful couple from Elmira, New York. Mrs. Doolittle had spent nearly 20 years bedridden, while her incurably crippled husband lived confined to a wheelchair. The Doolittles’ cheerful and hopeful dispositions in all circumstances inspired the Martins. When Walter asked the couple for the secret to their contentment, Mrs. Doolittle simply stated, “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.”¹

This profound truth inspired Civilla to pen the famed hymn “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” a testament to God’s supreme care for His children. She wrote:

Why should I feel discouraged?
Why should the shadows come?
Why should my heart be lonely
And long for heav’n and home,
When Jesus is my portion?
My constant Friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.

When we face life’s difficult, confusing, and overwhelming issues, we must choose either to trust our Creator or rely on our own wisdom. The apostle Paul detailed God’s authority over all:

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist (Col. 1:16–17).

How wonderful it is that the One who created us holds all things together for His glory!

Committing to God’s sovereignty over our lives displaces fear. Lest we are tempted to think we are insignificant in God’s plan, He tells us that He knows the very number of hairs on our heads (Mt. 10:30). Even a seemingly insignificant sparrow doesn’t fall to the ground unless God wills it (v. 29). When we understand that we, His image-bearers, are much more valuable than the sparrows in His care (v. 31), we can be confident that none of His purposes can be thwarted (Job 42:2).

We are utterly finite and dependent on God’s grace. He needs nothing from us; we need everything from Him. He is eternal, while our natural lives are brief and filled with reminders of our weakness. Our daily actions—eating, sleeping, and even brushing our teeth—force us to acknowledge that our bodies decay and our time and energy are limited. When we sin, we rely on our own wisdom, our limited understanding, and our prideful desires, rather than trusting and obeying God.

The psalmist wrote, “For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish” (Ps. 1:6). Thus, our response to God’s sovereignty takes one of two paths: (1) increasing our dependence on God and His Word, leading to life or (2) resisting what He has revealed to us in His Word, leading to death.

The Bible is filled with people who wisely learned to take God at His Word and depend on Him rather than themselves. Their opportunities to rely on God required great faith in Him, rather than in what they could see. Some in Scripture trusted despite never personally seeing God’s plan come to fruition, while others ran away from God’s plan for their lives.

Job
Job is known for his trust in and obedience to God, even in the worst of circumstances. Satan accused Job of loving God only for the gifts He had given him. But even after Job lost everything—his health, prosperity, and family—his confidence in God’s sovereign plan gave him unshakable hope, as he said of God, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15). God rewarded Job by restoring what he lost and giving him “twice as much as he had before” (42:10).

When faced with severe circumstances that might easily cause us to despair, we must increase our dependence on the Lord by trusting that He knows all things and has a plan to work in and through us in ways we may never understand this side of heaven.

Abraham
If Job is the paragon of patience, Abraham is the paragon of faith. When Abraham (then Abram) was 75 years old and childless, the Lord told him, “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1). God told Abraham to leave the pagan city of Ur and trust that He would bring him to a land and “make [him] a great nation” (v. 2). Humanly speaking, Abraham had every reason to conclude this plan was impossible or that he misunderstood God. Yet, he obeyed the Lord (v. 4); and God gave him and his wife, Sarah, a son of the promise when he was 100 years old.

Later, Abraham again demonstrated remarkable faith in God’s sovereign plan when he prepared to sacrifice Isaac, his son, according to God’s command (22:1–3). God rewarded Abraham’s faith by sparing Isaac and promising to bless all the nations of the world through his seed (vv. 11–18).

God always does what He says He will do. Abraham maintained his faith in God even when his problems seemingly had no answers.

Joseph
Jacob’s son Joseph suffered many injustices. He was thrown into a pit by his brothers, his own flesh and blood, and left there to die until they decided to sell him into slavery. As a slave, he was falsely accused of immorality and imprisoned for years. Certainly, we would forgive him if he didn’t feel optimistic about his future.

However, amid Joseph’s trials, God was at work. His sovereign plan would not be thwarted, for “He does whatever He pleases” (Ps. 115:3). He used these events to elevate Joseph to prominence in Egypt so he could save the Israelites—even the brothers who betrayed him—from starvation. Joseph told his brothers, “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive” (Gen. 50:20).

Their evil intentions and the fraudulent charges of immorality against Joseph could not hinder the One who “changes the times and the seasons; . . .[and] removes kings and raises up kings” (Dan. 2:21).

John the Baptist
Job saw God’s blessing at the end of his life (Job 42:12). Abraham experienced great joy and relief when the Angel of the Lord stopped him from sacrificing Isaac (Gen. 22:11). Joseph reconciled with his brothers and earned great honor when Pharaoh set him over Egypt (41:41; 45:1–15). However, even if we are faithful, we can’t always see clearly how God works things together for our good (cf. Rom. 8:28). Such was the case for John the Baptist.

John faithfully proclaimed the way of the Lord (Jn. 1:23), but his life ended abruptly when he was brutally beheaded as a young man at Herod Antipas’s command. He missed the joy of witnessing the resurrected Jesus on Earth.

When Jesus learned of John’s death, He sought solitude in a deserted place to mourn (Mt. 14:12–13). John’s life and death remind us we cannot always comprehend how God is working through our circumstances nor see the result of how His sovereignty intersects with our choices to obey or disobey.

Two Paths
Our limited, earthly perspective leaves us with a choice. We can heed the psalmist’s advice and walk the path of righteousness, trusting God’s sovereignty over our lives; or we can resist Him by not taking Him at His Word and living only by what we see.

We may never know in this life the full story of how God uses us. But, we can be sure His plan and promises will be fulfilled.

Sometimes, our inability to see how God is using our circumstances might cause us to feel fearful or inadequate to do all He has called us to do. The prophet Jeremiah felt that way. “Ah, Lord GOD!” he said. “‘Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth.’ But the LORD said to me: ‘Do not say, “I am a youth,” for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you to deliver you’” (Jer. 1:6–8).

God did not tell Jeremiah, “You can do it!” Rather, God assured him that He was with him. Jeremiah’s inadequacies were beside the point. The greater question was whether the prophet would trust God or let his own insufficiency weigh him down.

Living in obedience to God’s Word through the power of the Spirit draws us into a greater dependence on Him. Leaning on our own understanding (Prov. 3:5–6) merely increases our dependence on our own faulty, unreliable wisdom.

Proverbs 16:9 reads, “A man’s heart plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps.” Let us join the company of saints (Heb. 11) who, in faith, followed the Lord down a path of righteousness and trusted Him to do what was best, even when they could not see the road ahead. May we be moldable clay in the hands of our Creator (Isa. 45:9) and find great joy in our obedience to Him, trusting Him as our loving and perfect Father who sees from beginning to end.

ENDNOTE

1. 1. 1. 1. Vincent D. Homan, A Foot in Two Worlds: A Pastor’s Journey From Grief to Hope (Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press, 2013), 112.